By RAW, in Golarion, is abortion evil?


Lost Omens Campaign Setting General Discussion

51 to 100 of 142 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | next > last >>

1 person marked this as a favorite.

If a paladin fails his saving throw against a create pit spell, does he fall?


Pharasma is true neutral so anything against her teachings would be chaotic/lawful evil/good. So abortion can be any or all of thos things.

Silver Crusade

thejeff wrote:
Gorbacz wrote:
Oh, abortions and rules for tabletop wargaming! So, if a Paladin smites a woman with a LE fetus inside of her, does he get to add bonuses to attack and damage?
If a paladin kills an evil woman with an innocent fetus inside of her, does he fall?

Given that Pharisma's beef with abortion is more about the unborn not having a chance to do anything judgement worthy, I would posit that fetuses are probably TN much the same way animals are, so unless they are some sort of pre-born intelligence like Alia Atreides they don't really have alignment and killing them is no different than killing an animal. That's just how I would handle it, anyway.

Silver Crusade

Threeshades wrote:
Pharasma is true neutral so anything against her teachings would be chaotic/lawful evil/good. So abortion can be any or all of thos things.

This is not necessarily correct. Things against her teachings certainly COULD be good/evil/lawful/chaotic, but there's nothing says they have to be (or that something in accordance with Pharisma's teaches can't be good/evil/lawful/chaotic.

EDUT: Apologies for the double post.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

This is a terrible discussion to have.

Silver Crusade

captain yesterday wrote:
This is a terrible discussion to have.

Well, I'm glad you cleared that up. I don't think anyone has brought up the fact that this is a sensitive topic or that it could very easily devolve. Your contribution is noted. Personally, I'm quite pleased with how the people actually participating are keeping things pretty on point.


thejeff wrote:
Gorbacz wrote:
Oh, abortions and rules for tabletop wargaming! So, if a Paladin smites a woman with a LE fetus inside of her, does he get to add bonuses to attack and damage?
If a paladin kills an evil woman with an innocent fetus inside of her, does he fall?

this is a very good question. By default, unborn babies are innocent. Can Paladins ever attack and kill someone pregnant?

Just because a fetus is TN doesn't necessarily mea. It is ok (or not ok) to kill it.

Liberty's Edge

1 person marked this as a favorite.
FiddlersGreen wrote:
Just want to point out that from Psalms 22:10, Psalms 139:13 and Jeremiah 1:5, the Biblical view has always been that an unborn fetus has a soul. There was no 're-imagining' involved.

Not looking to have a debate about how various biblical passages were interpreted by various groups in the past vs present, so I'll just say that it is simply a historical fact that the 'first breath' doctrine on ensoulment existed.... along with the 'quickening' doctrine, the 'developing soul' doctrine (i.e. first no soul, then an animal soul, and only eventually developing into a human soul), and numerous less common views (e.g. 'no soul until the first time you say Amen'). There are extensive writings from past theological debates about them. Thus, views on this issue have unquestionably changed over time. The current 'conception' doctrine has not "always" been in place.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

This thread?

Nope.

Silver Crusade

CBDunkerson wrote:
FiddlersGreen wrote:
Just want to point out that from Psalms 22:10, Psalms 139:13 and Jeremiah 1:5, the Biblical view has always been that an unborn fetus has a soul. There was no 're-imagining' involved.
Not looking to have a debate about how various biblical passages were interpreted by various groups in the past vs present, so I'll just say that it is simply a historical fact that the 'first breath' doctrine on ensoulment existed.... along with the 'quickening' doctrine, the 'developing soul' doctrine (i.e. first no soul, then an animal soul, and only eventually developing into a human soul), and numerous less common views (e.g. 'no soul until the first time you say Amen'). There are extensive writings from past theological debates about them. Thus, views on this issue have unquestionably changed over time. The current 'conception' doctrine has not "always" been in place.

Off topic, please don't get into it here.


Bard-Sader wrote:

Ok, so here is the logic.

1) Pharasma, the goddess of death, births, Fate, and arbiter of souls, says that Abortion is evil (an abomination). It is written in the sinner Sea Gods book.

Could you please provide a quote here? I can't find it in any wiki. As newtkeeper and Steve Geddes already pointed out, abominations are not evil by default, so I think the exact wording matters.

Anyway, Pharasma has several aspects, so let's look at the interaction with abortion:

1) Death aspect favors abortion / doesn't care: If the unborn is considered alive on its own (and not just a part of the mother), abortion would be totally fine for this aspect since it causes a death. If not, it's not important at all - Pharasma doesn't care much about mortal body parts, as far as I know.

2) Birth aspect opposes: It wants the unborn to be born, making abortion no option.

3) Fate aspect doesn't care / opposes: It could be the fate of the unborn to die before birth - so no problem from this aspect here. But if fates are exclusive for born mortals, this aspect would oppose abortion.

4) Arbiter of souls aspect doesn't care: Assuming an unborn has a soul already, abortion just means the soul coming earlier. If it has no soul yet, then it makes no difference at all.

So, if these four aspects are weighted about equally, Pharasma would have a rather neutral view on abortion. I am aware this is very reductionistic, but it isn't supposed to answer the question on its own. Which is about RAW anyway.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

A paladin must leap to tackle a quasit, but his Acrobatics is abysmal. If a paladin is unable to spring, does he fall?


From the first until the last
Search the codes of every class
One means one so search them all
Welcome to Paladin Falls


1 person marked this as a favorite.

From the Pharasma article in Trial of the Beast (because I don't have Inner Sea Gods)

Though she is the goddess of birth, she does not oppose contraception, and her temples have been known to provide this assistance to women with a history of stillbirths and deformities. However, she believes killing a child in the womb is an abomination, for it sends the infant soul to the afterlife before it has a chance to fulfill its destiny; thus the goddesses midwives refuse to aid in such matters, even if bearing a child would be a great risk to the mother. Some church midwives, called casametzes, are so skilled in a combination of medicine, magic and surgery that in dire circumstances they can cut a living child from it's mother's womb and save both. Curiously the church does not frowns upon suicide, though individual priests may debate whether taking one's own life is the natural fate of some souls, or a means to return to the goddess for a chance at a different life.

I did the whole section there rather then paraphrase.

Community & Digital Content Director

4 people marked this as a favorite.

Just a quite note: we acknowledge the discussion here has been pretty civil, but we've got our all-watching eye on it. Please keep this one centered squarely on Golarion folks!


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Wrong does not equal evil.
Prohibition would probably be wrong according to drunk god, but is it evil?

Dark Archive

4 people marked this as a favorite.
CBDunkerson wrote:
Not looking to have a debate about how various biblical passages were interpreted by various groups in the past vs present, so I'll just say that it is simply a historical fact that the 'first breath' doctrine on ensoulment existed.... along with the 'quickening' doctrine, the 'developing soul' doctrine (i.e. first no soul, then an animal soul, and only eventually developing into a human soul), and numerous less common views (e.g. 'no soul until the first time you say Amen'). There are extensive writings from past theological debates about them. Thus, views on this issue have unquestionably changed over time. The current 'conception' doctrine has not "always" been in place.

I'd probably use a version of this for a fantasy game world.

In Set-Golarion, souls get issued at the moment of birth, not the moment of conception, or something like that, so a fetus that doesn't survive (for *whatever* reason) is more of a lost opportunity than a person who didn't live to see the outside world (and given that most fertilized eggs don't thrive, the outer planes would be 70% souls of unborn fetuses anyway, which seems like it would make for a creepy sort of afterlife, and where does Pharasma 'sort' souls of the unborn, who obviously didn't have much time to develop a patron deity or set of moral or ethical guidelines?).

But, for Golarion, Pharasma is the arbiter of when and where souls are issued, and if Pharasma says it's at conception, then that's pretty much canon, and either conception is *much* rarer and more successful in Golarion than on Earth, *or* the outer planes are indeed primarily inhabited by baby souls that never got to breath Golarion air. Who knows. Not something terribly relevant to most games.

Since identical twins split hours after conception, which, in Golarion, would be hours after Pharasma gave a soul to the fertilized egg, that suggests that one half of identical twin pairs didn't get the soul (determined by some sort of Thunderwomb scenario where two blastocytes enter and one leaves with the soul?), and are soulless abominations! Woo! Plot hook! A Pharasman mystery cult that wanders around trying to figure out which of any pair of twins they encounter is 'the soulless one' and killing them! (Or maybe the soul is split between them, making them *both* seen as morally suspect and 'weak souled' and susceptible to possession/evil/etc.? Or maybe souls are like livers, and grow to fill their new home, so that a half-soul is equal to a full soul, after a few weeks or months? If that's the case, soul-traffickers like Night Hags are gonna have a field day splitting souls they've captured into fragments and nurturing them to grow full size souls out of the pieces-parts...).

Ooh. My head dun broke.

If it ever matters, which I don't think it will, I'm gonna go with 'souls get assigned at birth' for any games I run in Golarion.

There's a whole article on souls, in, IIRC, Mummy's Mask. I'm going to have to check that out and see if it agrees with or contradicts (or has nothing to say) on this whole 'when souls get assigned' thing.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

The left twin inevitably is the soulless one


Hmm, if souls are assigned at conception, then I'd guess that if a fetus dies the soul that never got any chance to do anything should be reassigned into the birth queue. At least, hats how I'd have Pharasma do it. It makes things nice and tidy wihot the question of how to judge a fetus soul and send it to the afterlife.


Bard-Sader wrote:
Hmm, if souls are assigned at conception, then I'd guess that if a fetus dies the soul that never got any chance to do anything should be reassigned into the birth queue. At least, hats how I'd have Pharasma do it. It makes things nice and tidy wihot the question of how to judge a fetus soul and send it to the afterlife.

I like this. Very pragmatic. I could imagine a particularly unlucky soul having to go through many many 'attempts' to be born. Maybe this is how you get stuff like the Martyred bloodline.


Bard-Sader wrote:
Hmm, if souls are assigned at conception, then I'd guess that if a fetus dies the soul that never got any chance to do anything should be reassigned into the birth queue. At least, hats how I'd have Pharasma do it. It makes things nice and tidy wihot the question of how to judge a fetus soul and send it to the afterlife.

That's not a bad way to handle it and I was thinking of something similar.

It doesn't really match with Pharasma's stated position though:

Quote:
she believes killing a child in the womb is an abomination, for it sends the infant soul to the afterlife before it has a chance to fulfill its destiny


Knight Magenta wrote:
Bard-Sader wrote:
Hmm, if souls are assigned at conception, then I'd guess that if a fetus dies the soul that never got any chance to do anything should be reassigned into the birth queue. At least, hats how I'd have Pharasma do it. It makes things nice and tidy wihot the question of how to judge a fetus soul and send it to the afterlife.
I like this. Very pragmatic. I could imagine a particularly unlucky soul having to go through many many 'attempts' to be born. Maybe this is how you get stuff like the Martyred bloodline.

suck it, whomever said that no good can come of this thread! ;)

Just kidding.

In any case, I wonder how Pharasma view Samsarans. Annoyed that their souls get to cheat and stand in their own circular lines? Heh


6 people marked this as a favorite.

Having recently written the soul article on PathfinderWiki, I've run into the "when does a mortal get a soul" detail quite a bit in the last couple of weeks.

The Great Beyond is pretty definite about mortals having souls at birth (page 6; "A child is born possessing a soul"), and strongly suggests this occurs when a new creature is born (souls emerge onto the Material Plane "to germinate among the nascent lives of any orbiting worlds" of a nearby star/Positive Energy Plane portal; page 6). Pyramid of the Sky Pharaoh lines up with this description, adds details about the path (souls travel from the Positive Energy Plane, through the First World and Ethereal Plane, then into the Material Plane) and suggests that mortal metaphysicial study has only narrowed the entrance of a soul down to the time of birth.

Pharasma herself has no influence over the creation or installation of souls, even though her followers believe she does (The Great Beyond 5), as even the Positive Energy Plane--the origin of souls--is capable of destroying even gods within moments (Pyramid of the Sky Pharaoh is explicit, but The Great Beyond pages 5 and 7 also note that gods have no idea how creation actually works or "why souls originate in the first place, from where, and by whose design").

That, along with gods' inability to handle even a minute or two of exposure to the Positive Energy Plane without considerable effort, suggests that Pharasma--even as the goddess of fate--doesn't know what happens to souls before childbirth. The most charitable interpretation of her stance in Inner Sea Gods might be that it's as much a statement of her own beliefs as any other mortal's would be, as she doesn't have definitive proof of her own. She has a privileged position, perhaps, but it's not authoritative.

Probably oversimplified or inaccurate River of Souls summary:
As best as I can gather from the above-mentioned sources, the cycle of a soul is basically this:

  • Raw, unaligned potentiality gets routed via the Maelstrom's Antipode to the Positive Energy Plane.
  • Bits of that potentiality meld with raw energy in the Positive Energy Plane to form a nascent soul.
  • Jyoti tend to those nascent souls until they mature, then push them through weak points between the Positive Energy Plane and the other planes. You might know these portals by their more popular name: stars.

The canon gets a little cagier at this point, especially between The Great Beyond and Pyramid of the Sky Pharaoh, but essentially:

  • Unaligned souls travel through the First World, creating new fey from soul energy shed in their wake while picking up the quirks that make them unique from the plane's ambient energy/weirdness.
  • New souls pass from the First World to the Ethereal Plane, then from there into waiting mortal vessels, such as newborn children (or animals, or androids in mid-refresh, etc.).

The rest is pretty solidly canon:

  • Life happens.
  • The mortal dies, its soul takes the River of Souls to the Boneyard, Pharasma judges it.
  • Most souls go to a compatible plane and become outsiders, usually petitioners, by melding with the plane's aligned quintessence.
  • After a few thousand years of afterlife and/or the outsider's destruction, its soul energy and quintessence are absorbed into its home plane, or in some unfortunate cases, straight to the Maelstrom.
  • The Maelstrom slowly erodes quintessence from every other plane and launders the alignment out of it, making it unaligned potentiality.
  • Potentiality eventually hits the Antipode.
  • Rinse and repeat.

So the nut of the Pharasmin problem is that the cited statement from articles about Pharasma suggest she either doesn't understand how souls work (plausible, as no god does and she has little to no way of proving how souls work on her own), or nothing released in the canon is either accurate or detailed enough to disprove her (plausible, as sourcebooks often represent unreliable or incomplete mortal knowledge).

However, if Pharasma has a problem with abortion, it would make more sense for it to be because a mortal is modifying a soul's fate by rerouting it to a different vessel instead of skipping mortality for the afterlife; even that's a stretch, as there's nothing in The Great Beyond, Pyramid, or elsewhere suggesting that souls have a predefined target vessel, as opposed to just wandering around a transitive plane looking for any that'll do. (Both the Campaign Setting's concept and implementation of reincarnation very loosely suggest the latter.) And if an abortion is all it takes to rewrite fate, it seems like there'd be bigger threats to the fabric of reality from murder, war, famine, and disaster. How many pregnant women died during Earthfall? How much of Golarion's fate did that rewrite? Why is abortion called out as an exception?

Also, nothing suggests Pharasma has any particular beef with mothers whose pregnancies fail in other ways, or even with people who kill a pregnant creature. How many pregnant women died in any of Golarion's many wars? Did the soldiers or commanders of those who fought in those wars face consequences from Pharasma? We don't really know.

tl;dr: If you ever need an adventure idea for a maxed-out Pharasmin, send them on a quest to figure out how the heck souls work, because she seems to need an update. And if you want to learn more (or have anything to add), you can start with these subjects in Campaign Setting metaphysics.


Bard-Sader wrote:
In any case, I wonder how Pharasma view Samsarans. Annoyed that their souls get to cheat and stand in their own circular lines?

She doesn't beef with reincarnation by nature because every soul eventually reaches the Boneyard. I think that's in Pyramid (which isn't in front of me, unfortunately). In rare cases she even reincarnates souls herself, or holds souls in the Boneyard for resurrection when she knows that soul's fate isn't fulfilled (which also makes me question why she'd have such a problem with a soul arriving sooner than she expected, since she can just throw them back).


Wow, this is very informative. Thank you!

The corollary question now becomes: are souls necessary for person-hood? If so, fetuses are not people.

Or perhaps, as a certain archangel says in the Dresden Files, " you don't have a soul. Your soul HAS a body."


Bard-Sader wrote:
The corollary question now becomes: are souls necessary for person-hood? If so, fetuses are not people.

If I had to wager, I'd bet the existence of soul-bearing intelligent undead compared to soulless unintelligent undead, or the significant differences between androids or artificial intelligences vs. robots, mean having a soul certainly helps with personhood.


Keep in mind that Pharasma's judgement is only personal to souls who are unsworn to other gods.

When the follower of a god goes to the Boneyard, Pharasma has to judge them according to the beliefs of the god the soul followed. (Otherwise, why would anyone, anywhere follow any god that was opposed to Pharasma's beliefs).

A devout follower of Gorum doesn't get punished for all that senseless violence they engaged in. They get sent before Pharasma, and then she sends them to Gorum. Then they get rewarded for their success in battle.

Therefor, Pharasma's views on abortion only matter to people who worship Pharasma, and people who do not worship any god.

So in the case of abortion, it is likely that the soul of an unbord child would be judged as an innocent, and the soul of a woman who chose to abort their child would be judged according to her own god.


Doomed Hero wrote:
Keep in mind that Pharasma's judgement is only personal to souls who are unsworn to other gods.

Per Pyramid, she shuttles atheists off to compatible planes unless they go all Zyphus on her and explicitly dissent to her assignment. By that point they've already ticked her off more than an abortion would, so she basically turns them into bricks ("soul debris") in the Graveyard of Souls to reinforce the spire.

So yeah, the scope of the abortion judgment is pretty limited to Pharasmins, but since many midwives are Pharasmins, that belief less directly affects many pregnant women. Even if your god would allow you to have an abortion, good luck getting a safe one from a skilled healer who specializes in reproduction, as I don't think there's a good-aligned divine entity that actually condones its followers providing any sort of contraception or abortifacients. (Calistria does, though!)

I think that's also where the controversy started regarding followers of Zyphus performing abortions to damn the unborn souls to Zyphus's plane instead of Pharasma (per, I think, his article in one of the Iron Gods issues). Per TGB and Pyramid at least, that shouldn't work (as the fetus shouldn't have a soul yet), and if anything that makes Zyphens one of the only religious groups to actively perform "safe" abortions (along with Calistrians, and probably another evil demigod or two) as, despite their best efforts, there's probably no soul to damn. (Not that anything a Zyphen does is safe, of course.)

Grand Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Goblin_Priest wrote:

Does it matter?

What kind of DM would create a situation where this matters...?

Someone who really has it in for the women in his playing group aka, a GamerGate GM?

Abortion is a touchy enough topic in real life, Bringing this up in game is seldom anything but an extremely bad idea. It's even more unhelpful if there are women in the group, as this is not an issue that impacts both genders on an equal basis.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

That pregnant goblin is a morality trap! Run!!!!


CBDunkerson wrote:
FiddlersGreen wrote:
Just want to point out that from Psalms 22:10, Psalms 139:13 and Jeremiah 1:5, the Biblical view has always been that an unborn fetus has a soul. There was no 're-imagining' involved.
Not looking to have a debate about how various biblical passages were interpreted by various groups in the past vs present, so I'll just say that it is simply a historical fact that the 'first breath' doctrine on ensoulment existed.... along with the 'quickening' doctrine, the 'developing soul' doctrine (i.e. first no soul, then an animal soul, and only eventually developing into a human soul), and numerous less common views (e.g. 'no soul until the first time you say Amen'). There are extensive writings from past theological debates about them. Thus, views on this issue have unquestionably changed over time. The current 'conception' doctrine has not "always" been in place.

The idea of 'no soul till you say 'Amen' came from fringe (not mainstream) theories within Judaism rather than Christianity. The 'developing soul' idea was from Aristotle, and the discussions of this and the proposition that the soul entered on quickening (which is by the way a medical rather than a doctrinal term) were adopted by the Catholic church from extra-biblical sources under political motivations and influences (this being one of many instances in which the Catholic church at various points in time vacillated between adopting and rejecting concepts and practices alien to the Bible, and which ultimately led to the Protestant Reformation). As far as views founded on the Bible, there has been to my knowledge no view other than that the unborn foetus has a soul, and I would propose that a challenge to this statement would require quotation from Biblical texts.

But I think that the above analysis also helps shed light on why the metaphysics of Golarion are confused or not always consistent. Rather than drawing on a single (such as the Bible), they draw on the views of many writers, who themselves draw their views on the subject from a variety of real-world sources. Furthermore, because this is a sensitive topic, there are political/public-relations reasons that influence the writings on how the metaphysics work in Golarion to avoid potential offense. And much of this I suspect would have happened subconciously in the course of the creative writing process.

I think two things are hence required to move this discussion forward for Golarion. Firstly, there needs to be a maturity amongst the readers to recognise that Golarion is ultimately a fictitious world, with fictitious metaphysics, and that writings on the metaphysics on Golarion are to be taken as fiction rather than statements about real-world metaphysics. Secondly, at some point there should be a discussion about the metaphysics of Golarion by the creative team, about how they want the metaphysics of Golarion to function, independent of how any member of the creative team thinks real-world metaphysics function, so that there is cohesion in the material that refer to or allude to Golarion's metaphysics.


Most of our responses in this thread have been very civil and cordial.

We need a metaphysical source book!


Bard-Sader wrote:

Most of our responses in this thread have been very civil and cordial.

We need a metaphysical source book!

I agree. =)

When I referred to 'readers' in the last statement of my previous post, I was referring to the entire Pathfinder-playing community, which can sometimes be a little bit more of a mixed-bag (naturally, since we are a very diverse crowd, after all). =)


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Bard-Sader wrote:


We need a metaphysical source book!

That's a can of worms nobody wants Paizo to open. Their weird and sometimes frankly disturbing views on alignment (Eating people for funsies isn't evil, but eating them to gain sustenance is!) are bad enough.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Rynjin wrote:
Bard-Sader wrote:


We need a metaphysical source book!
That's a can of worms nobody wants Paizo to open. Their weird and sometimes frankly disturbing views on alignment (Eating people for funsies isn't evil, but eating them to gain sustenance is!) are bad enough.

Is that really expressed somewhere in a sourcebook? O_O

In any event, I'd repeat what I said earlier:

FiddlersGreen wrote:
Firstly, there needs to be a maturity amongst the readers to recognise that Golarion is ultimately a fictitious world, with fictitious metaphysics, and that writings on the metaphysics on Golarion are to be taken as fiction rather than statements about real-world metaphysics.

But upon further consideration, perhaps the inherently diverse and non-exclusive nature of the Pathfinder-playing community means that such maturity cannot always be assumed (how often it can be assumed will itself be a subject of substantial debate). I think it can be done, but it will need to be done carefully, so that it touches on metaphysics only, while leaving the moral and alignment repercussions to be worked out by the GMs and players.

There are useful and interesting and helpful things to explore. Things like the nature of necromancy, the nature of the relationship between soul and body in Golarion, what a soul is in Golarion, perhaps even whether there are differences between the nature of, say, an elven soul, a dwarven soul and a gnome's soul (which may lead into explanations for why unions between these races do not produce offspring). What does it mean for a race (such as the drow) to be 'always evil by default' in the realm of Golarion - is it their culture or their very nature and soul that is corrupt? Perhaps even the nature of the beings of the higher and lower planes, and the repercussions of their bodies and souls being one and the same (and how this interacts with the new possession-type spells in the new occult sourcebooks).

Metaphysics underlie and inform ethics, and often differences in ethics arise from differences in underlying metaphyscial assumptions. I think a book that sets out the objective metaphysics of Golarion, but leaves the subjective ethics to the adjudication of the GMs, would be productive. But if Paizo does such a book, it will need to be prefaced and probably repeated multiple times that the metaphysics pertain to the fictitious realm of Golarion only and are distinct from the metaphysics of our world. If nothing else, it would give players and GMs a common ground from which to work out things like the goblin babies conundrum, which I think at the end of the day hinges precisely on metaphysical assumptions.

In short, it will be a book that says "leave behind what you believe the real world's metaphysics - Golarion and the real world are not the same, and this is what the metaphysic of Golarion is".


CBDunkerson wrote:

Note that the same passage says that priests of Pharasma perform abortions... though apparently only when the pregnancy would otherwise kill both the woman and her fetus.

That said, the central argument presented is that an unborn fetus has a soul... matching the modern re-imagining of Christian belief on this issue (which has displaced the older/biblical view that the soul entered the body when the first breath was drawn). Once you include the concept of souls in the game, without which much of the logical purpose for 'gods' is lost, questions of where they come from and how they work are inevitable. However, this could have simply been left vague/unstated rather than having the metaphysics of Golarion match one subset of religious/moral beliefs about such in our reality.

As to Pharasma's view and 'evil', the passage indicates that her objection is that the soul hasn't done anything yet and thus had no opportunity to determine how it would be judged. It has nothing to do with 'good' or 'evil'... indeed, Pharasma doesn't view actual obvious evil as "abomination". Her objection is that it makes her own role as judge impossible/irrelevant... there is nothing TO judge.

Well, if we are getting into premodern christian belief, then we are going to HAVE to discuss the quickening.

Yes, the quickening. IE- the point where the baby starts to kick, which was regarded as the point where the baby had a soul/was alive/animate/etc. It has historically been an important distinction in the common law of abortion (sometimes, where abortion was found as a felony, pre-quickening abortion was found as a misdemeanor, or it might not be considered a crime at all).

And an excellent place to look at some of the historical background is actually Roe v. Wade. That had a large section looking at how abortion has been treated historically, going back to the point that it questions whether parts of the hippocratic oath came a weird small set of local beliefs compared to greek culture as a whole.

While obviously, the quickening is not given as much weight anymore (although the idea that early and late term abortion, based on whether the fetus is considered 'alive' survives is still there)... well... occult adventures has a section on phrenology (the thing about head shapes=personalty). So why not use that?


Fiddler, the nature of necromancy and undeath is also a topic I'd like hear more about in Golarion.m

For example, what's the difference between raising a skeleton of a zombie, and making a bone or flesh golem. Assuming you use both for non-evil purposes such as manual labor? Or perhaps even rescue teams? An undead cares not about noxious fumes in a collapsed mine or the lack of air in a submerged tunnel!

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Bard-Sader wrote:

Fiddler, the nature of necromancy and undeath is also a topic I'd like hear more about in Golarion.m

For example, what's the difference between raising a skeleton of a zombie, and making a bone or flesh golem. Assuming you use both for non-evil purposes such as manual labor? Or perhaps even rescue teams? An undead cares not about noxious fumes in a collapsed mine or the lack of air in a submerged tunnel!

The way stories always work out is that while ideas like this seem good when starting out.. something awful will inevitably happen... because since we're talking about Golarion, zombies ARE evil. It won't happen of course until zombies are in wide use, then of course the minion of some god of undeath will unleash a massive zombie breakout.


3 people marked this as a favorite.
FiddlersGreen wrote:
Bard-Sader wrote:

Most of our responses in this thread have been very civil and cordial.

We need a metaphysical source book!

I agree. =)

When I referred to 'readers' in the last statement of my previous post, I was referring to the entire Pathfinder-playing community, which can sometimes be a little bit more of a mixed-bag (naturally, since we are a very diverse crowd, after all). =)

I'd be happy to leave metaphysics where it is now, personally - squarely in the hands of the DM (predominantly via whatever their take on the alignment system is).

I like articles like Wes's(?) river of souls piece in whichever-AP-it-was. Things which are basically in-game theories, rather than the truth.

From a more pragmatic perspective, I can see very little benefit - the people who would care about such a book are precisely the people who are going to have strong opinions one way or the other about how it "should" be. I see lots of potential heat and not many potential sales.


Bard-Sader wrote:

Ok, so here is the logic.

1) Pharasma, the goddess of death, births, Fate, and arbiter of souls, says that Abortion is evil (an abomination). It is written in the sinner Sea Gods book.

2). Pharasma gets to judge every soul at her great Boneyard, deciding the ultimate fate and location of the soul's eternal reward.

3). As Pharasma is the judge, her...well...JUDGEMENT...is the rule, regardless of whether you follow her tenets or not.

4). Golarion has objective Good and Evil, not subjective. Pharasma knows objectively what is Good and what is Evil, so she is right.

5). Therefore, on moral judgements, we tenets are absolutely true, upheld and BACKED by the metaphysical forces of the universe.

Now, if you want to say that Pharasmsa is NOT infallible in judging souls, then you are also saying that there may be a lot of souls that got send to the wrong afterlife.

So, is this paizo's intended statement? That in Golarion, abortion is evil? Do Paladins need to treat abortion providers as murderers? Am I missing something in my logic?

The same paragraph that states Pharasma's general opposition to "killing the unborn" also states that her temples routinely provide contraception and "deal with" pregnancies that threaten the health of the mother. So implying that she is strictly opposed to abortion is completely false.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
FiddlersGreen wrote:
There are useful and interesting and helpful things to explore. Things like the nature of necromancy, the nature of the relationship between soul and body in Golarion, what a soul is in Golarion, perhaps even whether there are differences between the nature of, say, an elven soul, a dwarven soul and a gnome's soul (which may lead into explanations for why unions between these races do not produce offspring). What does it mean for a race (such as the drow) to be 'always evil by default' in the realm of Golarion - is it their culture or their very nature and soul that is corrupt? Perhaps even the nature of the beings of the higher and lower planes, and the repercussions of their bodies and souls being one and the same (and how this interacts with the new possession-type spells in the new occult sourcebooks).

I don't think we need a rules book for that, and a setting one is questionable for that. Unless you're planning a campaign where players are playing the afterlife. (and for THAT kind of campaign.. the Wraith:The Obliviion rules set is a MUCH better choice), there' not even a real need for it. Petitioners don't remember much of their mortal lives, and people resurrected tend not to remember much of the aferlife, effectively a metaphysical censorship... because the gods really aren't keen on the living finding out that much about the afterlife, it seems.


Yet adventurers who plain shift into to Hell can see what happens and remember everything...

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Bard-Sader wrote:
Yet adventurers who plain shift I to Hell can we what happens and remember everything...

Because you're not dead. You see and experience what the living do... Petitioners experience the afterlife in ways the living can't imagine... or encompass.

Dark Archive

1 person marked this as a favorite.

There is a colossal leap of "logic" being made in this thread. "Pharasma's church considers X an abomination" does not at all mean "X is evil." She's not even a good deity!

Some members of Torag's church for instance considers bats to be abominations because they fly underground. Should a paladin of Torag smite the druid because he has a bat companion? This thread is ludicrous.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Psyren wrote:

There is a colossal leap of "logic" being made in this thread. "Pharasma's church considers X an abomination" does not at all mean "X is evil." She's not even a good deity!

Double down on this. When every other god in the neighborhood including Asmodeus was working with the good gods to try to contain Rovagug, she simply stood on the sidelines and watched.

When she knew Aroden was going to bite the big one... she didn't even warn her clerics of prophecy... who all went insane from the backlash of prophetic failure.


Wait? She didn't help against Rovagug? Does she LIKE a dead world?

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Bard-Sader wrote:
Wait? She didn't help against Rovagug? Does she LIKE a dead world?

Why not? if the world dies... her portfolio is supreme.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Well, she obviously knew her help wasn't needed. :P

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Kobold Cleaver wrote:
Well, she obviously knew her help wasn't needed. :P

According to Mr. Jacobs, she literally did not care.


I wonder how a campaign centered around taking down Pharasma would go...she would be make an interesting central villain.

Obviously the heroes don't fight her directly, but I'd probably have them go on quests to cut off her sources of power and worship.

51 to 100 of 142 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Lost Omens Campaign Setting / General Discussion / By RAW, in Golarion, is abortion evil? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.